(energetic music) - Hi, everybody.

It's time for "You Oughta Know" and here's what's coming up.

(computer whooshing) Arden for All brings art education to Philly students.

- [Josh] It's to kind of help bring English lessons to life.

(computer whooshing) - [Shirley] This Community College of Philadelphia course is equipping students to work on big rigs.

- [Jason] We have produced some of the best mechanics in the city.

(computer whooshing) - [Shirley] Plus, her fashion design background proved useful in her redesign of women's intimates.

- [Dana] At AnaOno, we like to say, "We're chest-inclusive intimates."

(energetic music) (computer whooshing) - Welcome to "You Oughta Know."

I'm Shirley Min.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age, a fashion designer could not find a bra that met her needs and still made her feel beautiful.

What she did find, however, was her calling.

(mesmerizing music) - [Dana] At AnaOno, we like to say, "We're chest-inclusive intimates."

We say, "Two boobs, one boob, no boobs, or new boobs, "we're here to support you."

- [Shirley] Dana Donofree is the founder and CEO of AnaOno.

- I got diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 27, 15 years ago.

And after undergoing a double mastectomy, going through chemotherapy, losing my eyebrows, my eyelashes, my chest, I felt completely dehumanized.

Not being able to find a bra that fit my reconstructed body was really debilitating to my everyday life.

(mesmerizing music) I probably visited hundreds of stores around the world, and just found nothing fit my body.

That's what made that little fire in my belly ignite and eventually gave me the idea to create AnaOno.

(mesmerizing music) - [Shirley] Using her years of experience as a fashion designer, Dana got to work redesigning bras for her new body and for other breast cancer patients and survivors.

(frenetic music) - [Dana] One of the biggest changes when you undergo a chest surgery related to a cancer diagnosis is that first, you may or may not have breasts walking out of there.

There's so many different chest outcomes following a cancer diagnosis that like it makes sense that a two-boobed bra won't fit a one-boobed person.

- Dana, talk to me about these bras here.

- Yeah, so at AnaOno, we really wanna start immediately at postoperative care.

A big part of that is managing drains.

Drains are attached to your body once you've had the mastectomy surgery.

And they can be in for a little while.

These have little drain pockets so you can keep the drain safe and secure against your body.

And what's great is that when the surgery's over, you just take the pockets off and you can continue to wear the postoperative bra.

- [Shirley] Other features of AnaOno bras include no underwire.

Because underwire can irritate incisions.

They're made from super-duper soft, breathable materials that are gentle on the skin.

- All of these little tiny tweaks is really why we benefit beyond just like a regular bra for anybody that's recovering from these procedures.

- [Shirley] AnaOno mostly caters to its community online.

But the bras are also sold at select stores like ThirdLove in Center City.

(energetic music) Joanne Thieu was diagnosed with breast cancer at 33.

Now, two years later, she's ready to look for bras post surgery.

- Everything out there looked pretty medical.

They didn't have a lot of style to them, not a lot of color, nothing that I was looking for.

- [Shirley] But then, she stumbled upon AnaOno.

- [Joanne] It's a form of self-empowerment, whether other people see it or not.

It was important for me to feel comfortable in something that I look good in.

(peaceful music) - [Shirley] 10 years on, Dana's hope for AnaOno is to be more than just a bra.

- What happened to me was like so many things were stripped out of my life.

I just never expected my underwear drawer to be one of the challenges I would face.

And what we hope to do with our bras is just stabilize the patient experience.

If you can leave your surgery feeling good, you will heal better.

Because the bra shouldn't be one of your problems.

(monotonal ambient music) - AnaOno offers male postoperative vests as well, all of which might be covered by your insurance.

Lastly, AnaOno is a play on Dana Donofree's name just without the double Ds.

(computer whooshing) The Southeastern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Drifters Incorporated are on a mission to uplift their communities.

Here today to tell us more about this organization and its upcoming event are three of its members, Nikki Paul, Jaynee Reeves Davis, and Stephanie Humphrey.

Ladies, welcome to "You Oughta Know."

- [Nikki, Janie, And Stephanie] Thank you for having us.

- Talk to me, Nikki, about the National Drifters Incorporated and its mission.

- Yes, well, the National Drifters Incorporated, we were founded in Waco, Texas in 1954 by Vivienne Lucille Mayes.

We chartered our first chapter in Chicago, Illinois in 1956.

And now, we have over 38 chapters across the country and 600 women, and growing strong.

- I love that, including the Southeastern Pennsylvania chapter, shortened as SEPA.

- SEPA.

- Okay, I'm getting it, I'm getting it.

(ladies laughing) Jaynee, talk to me about the upcoming event that you have.

It's a fundraiser.

- It's a fundraiser.

So on May 3rd, we are hosting our 21st Hattitude for Education.

It's our signature event.

And we are going to be at the Valley Forge Casino Resort on Derby Day.

So this year, our theme is, Hattitude meets the Derby.

So it's gonna be great.

- A lot of drama with the hats, I imagine.

(laughs) - [Jaynee] A lot of drama with the hats, yes, absolutely.

- And I know we were saying earlier, Stephanie, that the mission is to uplift the communities, right?

Talk to me about after 21 years of this fundraiser, which I know you guys have organized and figured out, this year is going to be different.

And talk to me about how it will be different in this year.

- It is because this is gonna be the first year that we'll be honoring our Hattitude Advocates for Education.

So we picked three community leaders that are doing really great things in the education space: the Reverend Daniel D. Moore and Principal Marla Travis and Kevin Upshur.

They really are leading the charge in education in the Philadelphia community.

So we're happy to be honoring them this year.

- And when you are uplifting the communities, we're talking about a multi-generational approach, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, the mission of the Drifters is to strengthen our families to create better community.

And that starts from youth all the way up to seniors.

And our programming really reflects that sort of community effort to reach every person.

- I love what you ladies are doing.

Talk to me about what you are getting from the organization and being part of it.

- Well, we are a group of dynamic women.

We lend our talent and treasure to giving back to the communities through civic, charitable, social, and educational initiatives.

So that gives me real satisfaction as a nonprofit organization to be able to give back to the community and to be able to uplift our community and the people that live within 'em.

- What about you, Jaynee?

- So with all of that, sisterhood.

Doing all of that and the sisterhood of it, the bond is really wonderful.

- Stephanie?

- And the connection.

You know, I think the pandemic had us all sort of isolated.

So it's really nice to be able to come back together, connect to each other as sisters, but also connect to our community for the greater good.

- Okay.

Nikki, Jaynee, Stephanie, thank you ladies for being here with me today.

- We hope you'll get your hat as well.

- Yes.

I need to start looking.

- Absolutely.

- Okay, and here's how you can get more information on Hattitude.

(computer whooshing) (energetic music) (computer whooshing) The demand for large vehicle mechanics is at an all time high.

And the Community College of Philadelphia Certification Program is giving students the experience to get the job done.

(upbeat music) - I am the Medium and Heavy Truck Instructor for Community College of Philadelphia.

I teach the big stuff.

This program, whether it be on the automotive side or the medium and heavy truck side, we have produced some of the best mechanics in the city, I believe.

- We have a whole truck shop with a Class 8 tractor, full-size SEPTA bus.

So you're never gonna find that anywhere else.

(upbeat music) This new facility's called the Career and Advanced Technology Center.

The program's located at 48th and Market.

It is what we call our West Regional Center campus.

This is a high tech environment.

We deal with very technically advanced vehicles.

It is an extremely unique opportunity for the citizens of Philadelphia to come down and experience this or come down and take some classes.

The program bar none is the most advanced program you're gonna find in Eastern Pennsylvania, if not the entire state.

There's other programs out there, mostly for-profit, a little bit different than a community college where you're saving that money, gaining that experience, getting a college education, and being able to start your career.

- I'm a graduate of this program for the automotive side.

I learned about how to do medium and heavy trucks by going through SEPTA.

I worked with SEPTA for 19 years.

I now work for my former instructor.

And he taught me a lot.

He gave me the excellent tools to go forward and get the job with SEPTA, and he improved my life.

(upbeat music) Every student has to go through our Medium and Heavy Truck Intro Class.

That is to tell the student what they're getting involved with.

You just can't jump in there and start tearing apart engines.

You have to understand how they work first before you start taking 'em apart.

Sometimes, we get students who've been out there in the workforce who've been doing things, but they might not have been doing it the correct way.

We tell 'em the correct way to do things.

The students who wanna work on trucks, they just find it fascinating.

And some students have worked in the industry before, and they wannna change to doing the heavier vehicles.

I go in there with from eight to 12 students max.

Our Intro class is a little larger.

I find joy when they understand something that I said and they go ahead and use it.

I tell my students when they come, I say, "You guys gotta understand, "when you do the medium and heavy truck "or the bus situation, we are important to commerce."

Working at SEPTA, I literally could say I helped that single mom go to work or pick up their child.

I helped that college student get to class.

I helped that person who didn't have a car at the time get back and forth to work.

As an instructor, I'm proud if I see one of my students do great things.

What was given to me, I'm giving good to somebody else.

That's my happiness.

(upbeat music) - We were able to hire a work-based learning coordinator who is my go-to when students look for job placement.

And he connects them to all our partners.

So we try to give them an impression that this is a career path, constant learning, new technology, advancement.

- We want the students to take what they have learned here and go out into the industry into a better life.

And they can do something that they love.

'Cause I truly love this.

(upbeat music) - These students are like my kids.

I want them to be able to give back to their community, support their family with a career, not just a job.

So it's really awesome to see their success.

- CCP.

- From the pages of books to the stage, Arden Theater's Arden for All Program is giving local students a hands-on art education.

(peaceful music) - 1, 2, 3, eyes on me.

- [Students] 1, 2, 3, eyes on you.

- (laughs) Perfect.

Arden for All Program is a literacy and theater-based lessons where we merge them together to have a kinesthetic learning experience for students in the classroom.

It's so good to see you guys today for our lesson of "The Hobbit."

It's to kind of help bring English lessons to life where we give each student a free book.

And we read the book and we kind of bring it to life, act out certain scenes from the book.

It's a way for them to interact with each other, focus on collaboration, independent learning, and literacy.

Who would like to be my Bilbo?

And then, I need a Gandalf.

I'm going to teach a third-grade class our first lesson from "The Hobbit" where we'll go over grammatical terms and we'll also bring the text to life.

The life skills that they're learning are really foremost collaboration, whether it be creating a scene together or trying to build that rapport with their classmates.

And we'll have teachers interacting with their students in a different way than they usually would in the classroom.

Ms. Wraith, can I have you read the narration lines?

- Sure.

"People considered the Bagginses very respectable."

I have seen the children incorporate everything that they learn in the Arden Program into a regular curriculum.

But I also see access for kiddos who maybe English is not a first language, who have learning disabilities.

They're able to access it through the hands-on, active, and engaging lessons that are brought through a totally different approach.

- "Good morning.

"We don't want any adventures here."

- We have the students create their own scenes.

We'll get the kids on their feet to interact with each other.

Can we stand up and push in our chairs?

We kinda let go of the reins, and we want to see where they are at creatively and to just have a fun time today.

So how this game elevator works, we're gonna pretend to go into our elevator.

We're going to hit the up button.

And then we're gonna pretend to go up, up, up, up, up.

And when we go out, we're going to be in a new environment.

They can be in space, or they can be in the desert.

But we also want to challenge them.

Can you describe that in detail with your body, with your voice, with your imagination?

Bing, we are in the safari.

We meet them where they're at.

We don't try to force them to be creative.

Ms. Wraith, where are we gonna go next?

- [Caitlin] Under the sea.

- Go under the sea.

And we're there, bing.

(students cheering) Are they creative in acting it out?

Are they creative with their voice in narrating the scene?

I really appreciate where we don't try to force but we try to meet them where they are.

Amazing, let's go back to our seats.

(peaceful music) Giving them the opportunity to see a show six times from third to fifth grade really is near and dear to my heart.

The students and the school receive free buses to and from the theater.

They receive free tickets.

When I see a student coming into our doors for the first time at the Arden, they're like, "Is this a movie theater?"

I'm like, "No, you're gonna see live people "in front of you."

They're experiencing something that maybe if it wasn't for our program, they wouldn't be able to.

You each are going to be trolls.

The stories really show them something that is outside of their realm as an escape that they can use to be someone that they never thought they could be before.

You have to show me with your body and with your imagination what adjective that you chose, okay.

- I am William, a troll that's name is William III.

- [Josh] I love it.

They perform for their classmates.

They find props around the room to use.

- I like the characters because like they're funny.

I also like the activities a lot because of how much you get to use the imagination with this program.

- They were really fun, and everybody was being really silly.

- [Josh] Which type of trolls are you?

- We're lazy.

- Lazy trolls.

Let's give this group a round of applause.

(students applauding) Good job, guys.

- We get to be silly, and we get to be ourselves every day.

- All right, my friends, that's the end of our class today.

Really great job; give yourselves a round of applause.

(students applauding) (upbeat music fades) - In nearby Delaware at the Freire School in Wilmington, focusing on creativity and critical thinking helps launch students to higher heights.

(peaceful music) - Freire Schools was founded in Philadelphia in 1999 with the mission of providing a college prep education to students in the city of Philadelphia.

We opened here in Wilmington in 2015 with the same mission.

Our founder, Kelly Davenport, worked with a group of student researchers before founding the school.

And she asked the students, "What is it that you want in a school?"

And what they came back to her with was they wanted a safe environment and they wanted rigorous academics.

- [Instructor] Anna, can you help me solve this, please?

- [Anna] Divide by four and you get five over two.

- Good, so I have my- - They really wanted to be challenged with rigorous content.

Many of our students come to us two to three years behind in math and reading.

And we really focus on accelerating their growth so that by the time they leave here, they're proficient and ready to take on college and careers.

- What information would you need to determine if a child would inherit a disorder from their parents?

- We really wanna make sure our teachers are sparking curiosity.

- When I plan my lessons, it's always on the forefront of my mind of how can I get students to engage with today's content, the kinds of things they could be thinking about.

But when a student comes up with an idea that really pushes the lesson forward, we run with that.

What kinds of things do you think a genetic counselor might do?

It gives students an opportunity to collaborate more often because their ideas are important.

Each kid's viewpoint is different from the next.

And so sometimes, and oftentimes they come up with a lot of really deep understanding of content just from what they can generate in the classrooms themselves.

Let's see if we can help each other out.

Alex, how much would you make as a genetic counselor?

We have students that come in and really want to know what's happening, what's next?

How does today connect to yesterday and where are we going?

So it's much more exciting.

(upbeat music) - Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and theorist.

His teachings really inspire and challenge us to center our students in everything that we do, to really ensure that they are thinking critically, that they are active participants in their learning rather than just empty vessels waiting to be filled.

- What's special about the classroom is when everyone engages and they interact in activities.

When we're all collaborating and doing teamwork and working with each other and just expressing kindness and gratitude, I feel like that's what's special about the classroom.

- I got really, really great feedback about what you all did.

I am so proud of the work that you did.

- The thing that I like most about the school is how everybody got their own personalities.

They promote you to be who you are.

- I think my team made more compelling argument because we were able to take what the other team said about our leader and also argue back with our own thoughts, and facts.

- Raise your hand if you're not on Jerika's team and you agree.

Okay.

- I wanna be an agriculture and food scientist.

So currently, I work on a farm.

This school really helped us because it gave us to be able to have a voice.

So it puts us out there.

It makes like our voices be heard.

- My plans for after Freire Charter School is to go to Howard University.

I plan to attend in a Major of Nursing.

So this way, I can become a registered nurse, a pediatric nurse so I can help kids.

We are the the next generation.

So I feel as though being a pediatric nurse would make me like help the future.

- From inspiration from Paulo Freire, we want our students to feel empowered to use their voice and be prepared to go out into the world and be change makers in their community.

That's what we need.

We want our students to build a better future.

- Freire Charter School, best school in Wilmington.

(students chatter indistinctly) (upbeat music fades) - It's a sound residents of Germantown know oh so well.

Let's meet the woman behind the music that rings out from the miraculous Medal Shrine Carillon Tower.

(bells ringing) - I grew up here in Germantown.

And the bells were always a big part of the sound of Germantown.

It creates a lot of joy.

(bells ringing) Monday night, we came here and the air was filled with that sound.

So there was kind of an excitement that went with the bells, you know, that you didn't think a whole lot about it or what song or hymn they're playing.

But it was just like the air full of the sound of the bells.

(bells ringing) - I'm Janet Tebbel.

We are here in the bell tower of the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown.

(upbeat music) This is a Vincentian Seminary and Chapel and Shrine.

And St. Vincent's birthplace is in Buglose, France.

A seminarian from Vincentian Seminary went to visit St. Vincent's birthplace and heard those bells and wanted them for Germantown.

(upbeat music) This was installed and dedicated in 1900.

It's a beautiful tower.

And with Our Mary on top, it shines bright.

(upbeat music) This is a carillon.

We have 47 bells.

And these are arranged like piano keys, white and black.

The bells are above my head up in the tower.

When Arthur Bigelow put in the proposal to reconstruct this carillon using most of the original 26 bells and adding a bunch up top here, he knew that in order to have this kind of keyboard, he built this keyboard, we needed to be closer to the bells.

So he built this platform so that these trackers, these are called trackers, would not have quite so much chance to flap or play around.

(bell rings) And as the key descends, it pulls a wire, which is pulling a clapper against the side of the bells.

The bells do not move.

The clapper is suspended close to the edge, and hits like this.

And that's what gives us the control.

So I can go... (hits clapper repeatedly) (bell rings) I'm chattering the clapper against the bell.

Our lowest bell here is 3,300 pounds, (bell rings) which in the world of bells is not huge, but it's very nice.

And the highest up here (hits clapper) is probably about 12 pounds.

So that's a well-constructed instrument.

(bells ringing) The best place to listen to the bells is far enough away from the tower that you can look up and see the bells.

And that means that the sound will come down to you.

(bells ringing) I like the richness of the sound of the bells.

When you play an organ, when you play a key, it sounds the same loudness no matter how hard you hit the key.

On the carillon, you can change the dynamic.

You can make it louder and softer.

So it's an expressive instrument.

(bells ringing) - I think if one were to do a visitor's guide for Germantown, one should include the cathedral with the carillon playing.

They are worthwhile listening to.

And there are the slats in the tower from where you can see the neighborhood.

It's fun to go up there and see my house from up there.

I hope the bells stay in good repair.

I hope that they will always have access to a knowledgeable and enthusiastic carilloner and that the neighborhood can enjoy it.

(ringing of bells) - All right, that is our show.

Have a good night, everyone.

(upbeat music) - What does a hobbit look like?

Well, a hobbit is a ugly person with stinky feet.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music stops)